


So Do All Who Live

by sahiya



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not as dark as the tags make it seem, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 09:29:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14566074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: Steve and Tony, at the end of all things––or the beginning of something not yet conceived.





	So Do All Who Live

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely post unbeta'd fic, but I wanted to throw this out into the world as quickly as possible. And this fic was cathartic for me, as was _Infinity War_ in general. (I know people are divided but I liked it about 1000x more than I was expecting to.)
> 
> The title comes from the _Lord of the Rings_ : “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
> 
> There are references to suicide throughout the fic. Neither Steve nor Tony seriously considers it.

It was much more than half the world, in the end. Steve didn’t know if Thanos didn’t realize or simply didn’t care how interdependent a world like theirs was. It was patients whose thoracic surgeons had died in the middle of open heart surgery. It was children whose parents had died while driving the car they were in. It was entire planes full of people that went down because pilots simply vanished into piles of dust and ashes, and so did the air traffic controllers and anyone else who might have helped them. 

Two weeks after the snap, and the damage just kept piling up. Half the world’s leaders had died; so had half the world’s physicians, half the world’s teachers, half the world’s police officers, half the world’s garbage collectors. Food was rotting in the fields and going bad in warehouses. Infrastructure was breaking down, and with it, the rule of law. 

Everyone had lost people, everyone was grief-stricken, which meant no one had the luxury of bereavement, not if humanity was going to survive. But a lot of people simply weren’t getting out of bed. Many didn’t want to exist in the world Thanos had created for them. The suicide rate had skyrocketed. Steve couldn’t say he blamed anyone who made that choice. But it was closed to him. There was so much work to be done, and someone had to do it. 

No one had heard from Tony. Steve assumed that meant he hadn’t survived. There was a yawning chasm of grief, waiting to swallow him up if he let it. That Tony had died before Steve had the chance to try and earn his forgiveness was unbearable––or would be, if he thought about it too long. He couldn’t think about Bucky at all, even if he woke nightly with the feeling of dust on his fingertips. And Sam–– _Sam_. The world needed Sam so badly. _Steve_ needed Sam so badly. 

He hadn’t cried yet, not for any of them. He wasn’t sure he could. 

They’d made the compound upstate into a refuge for those who had nowhere else to go. Most of the Avengers were there, but Steve had stayed behind in the city, doing what he could, where he could. He’d spent the day doing construction for one of the orphanages that were popping up to take in all the children whose parents were gone. He was tired and sore, and he wasn’t really looking forward to his cot at the relief workers’ center that had been set up in an abandoned office building in the Flatiron. But they’d have food, and Steve knew he needed to refuel after the day he’d had, even if he didn’t have any appetite. 

His commlink chirped. Telecommunications were down all over, but the commlinks worked because the Stark Industries satellites were still functioning. “Rogers,” Steve said. 

“Hey Steve,” Rhodey replied, sounding exhausted. But there was a note of something else in his voice, something Steve hadn’t heard from anyone since the snap. Was that... happiness? “Tony just checked in, he’s on his way home.”

Steve stopped dead in the middle of the street. “He is?”

“Yeah, he said he had to wait to call until he was within range of the satellites.”

“Just him?” Steve said. “Or him and...”

“Just him,” Rhodey said, voice gentling. “Strange and Peter... didn’t make it.”

Steve closed his eyes. He hadn’t known either of them well, but it was a blow nonetheless. And Steve knew enough to realize that Peter’s loss would be devastating to Tony. “Is he heading upstate then?”

“No, he said he’s going to park in the Quinjet hangar at the tower. He retained ownership of the penthouse when he sold the building. Steve.” Rhodey paused. “He doesn’t know about Pepper.”

Steve’s stomach turned to lead. “Rhodey, I shouldn’t––it shouldn’t be me.”

“You’re already there. We have our hands full here. And someone needs to tell him in person.”

“But––”

“Please.” Rhodey gave a shuddering breath. “Please. If you were ever his friend––”

“Of course I was,” Steve said, stung. 

“Then do this.”

Steve swallowed. “Yes. Okay.”

“Thank you. Tell him to call me?”

“Will do. Rogers out.” 

Steve stood for a full minute in the middle of the street, staring at nothing, before turning and starting to jog toward the tower. 

Not for the first time, Steve was struck by how eerie the city was. There were no cars on the road––when it could be found at all, the price of gas was astronomical—and many fewer people. Most had tried to leave the city. Those that had stayed didn’t spend a lot of time on the streets. By some miracle, the subway was still running, though not always reliably.

The front door to the building was locked up tight, but Steve knew other ways in. Tony apparently hadn’t seen fit to block the underground entrance known only to the Avengers when he’d sold the building. Steve was inside in a couple of minutes. 

The building felt... dead. Without JARVIS, without FRIDAY, it felt like there was something fundamentally wrong. Steve tried not to let it get to him as he started climbing the stairs to the penthouse on the 90th floor. 

He’d hoped to beat Tony there, but he knew as soon as he opened the door from the stairwell into the penthouse that he hadn’t. There was a living thrum up here that was missing in the rest of the building. Steve ached for its familiarity. “FRIDAY?” he said, and was glad when his voice only shook a little. 

“Hi, Cap. Boss is in the Quinjet hangar.”

“Thanks, FRIDAY.”

The hangar was open. An unfamiliar ship––a _space_ ship––was parked there. Tony was sitting at the edge of the short landing strip, feet dangling over the edge. Steve took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Tony?”

“Hi, Steve,” Tony said. He turned his head, not quite looking over his shoulder, and patted the space beside him. “Care to join me?”

Steve lowered himself down beside Tony. He let his feet hang down, ninety stories above the city. In the daytime, he thought, it probably wouldn’t look much changed. But dusk had fallen, and the expanse of darkness, punctuated here and there with the handful of lights that were functioning, gave the game away. 

“You know, for years now, I’ve been trying to persuade city officials to switch the city over to arc reactor power,” Tony said, almost conversationally. “Couldn’t ever get anywhere. Too much invested in ConEd.” He gave a brief, mirthless laugh. “Wonder if they’ll have changed their tune.”

“Probably.” Steve closed his eyes. He had to do it, he thought. He had to tell him now, before he lost his nerve. “Tony. I have to, to tell you something. I have news.”

“Yeah,” Tony said softly. “I thought you might. As soon as I hit satellite range, I started trying to reach Pepper. No answer.”

Steve swallowed. “I’m so sorry, Tony.” 

“Was it––was it the snap?” Tony asked. “Or something else?”

“The snap.”

Tony nodded. “So it was quick at least.” He sucked in a breath. “I’m almost jealous. She doesn’t have to live through this.”

Steve’s breath stopped. He was conscious of how high up they were. It would take very little for Tony to send himself over the edge. “Tony, please,” he said softly. “Don’t.”

Tony glanced at him. “Shit, sorry. Didn’t think about how that would––but no, I’m not––I guess you’d have to be kind of insane to not be at least a little bit suicidal right now, but I won’t. I wouldn’t. It’s not what Pepper would want. Or Peter.”

That was a knife to the gut all over again. It was one thing to hear it on the phone from Rhodey, another to see the pain fresh in Tony’s eyes. “I am so sorry about Peter.” 

Tony looked up, eyes on the horizon, gaze going distant. “I was holding him when it happened. Felt him turn to dust in my arms. He’d seen it happen to the others, he had enough time to get scared. I hope––I hope Pepper didn’t.”

“I didn’t reach Bucky in time,” Steve said hoarsely. “I didn’t know what was happening yet, I just––I just stood there, frozen.” He tried to draw breath, choked on it, and felt it coalesce into a point of breathtaking pain in his chest. There was the grief he’d been trying so hard to evade. It was the empty air under their feet, the dark expanse of an unlit and dying Manhattan stretching out in front of them, the two inches of space separating him from Tony. “I wish I’d been able to touch him one last time,” he managed after a few seconds. “But he was just––”

“Gone,” Tony finished. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

He sounded like he actually was sorry. Steve put his head in his hands, pulled at his hair. “I had an apology speech ready for you. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d never wanted to speak to me again, but I wanted to apologize. I was sorry, I am sorry, so fucking sorry, for what happened, for what I did. I hurt you, and I never––that was never what I wanted––”

“Don’t, Steve,” Tony said. “It just––it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Steve let his hands fall to lap. “You can’t mean that.”

“I do. Maybe––maybe someday it’ll matter again. But not right now. I don’t care what happened before. You were wrong. I was wrong. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t care. I care...” Tony turned and looked at him for the first time. “I care that you’re sitting here next to me right now. In a little bit, we’ll go inside, and we’ll eat some canned soup. And we’ll leave the rest of it behind, because I don’t have anything left for anger or recriminations or blame.”

Steve nodded. “Me neither,” he admitted.

“Good,” Tony said. He moved over two inches, so that his body was right up against Steve’s, and put his arm around Steve’s waist. Steve put his arm around Tony’s shoulders and turned, pressing his forehead against Tony’s head. He smelled like exhaustion and fear and two weeks without a shower. “How is everyone doing?” Tony asked softly. 

Steve shook his head. “I haven’t––I’ve been down here. Got everyone settled upstate, and then I just––I couldn’t. I think Rhodey might be doing the best. Thor is... I don’t think you’d recognize him, Tony. Bruce and Nat are somewhere in between.” Steve pressed a little closer. “I know I should be there. I should be with my team. But I didn’t think I could hold any of them up. I’m barely holding myself up.”

“You don’t need to hold yourself up, or anyone else,” Tony said. “That’s the point of a team. We hold each other up. Even I know that.”

Steve’s throat ached and his eyes were suddenly hot. The tears he hadn’t been able to summon for the past two weeks, which had seemed so remote and out of reach, were suddenly upon him. He gripped a fistful of Tony’s shirt and hid his face in Tony’s neck. He let out a harsh sob. “Tony,” he managed. “Tony, it’s just. It’s too much.”

“I know, Steve,” Tony murmured. “I know.”

Steve sobbed. He wept like an abandoned, disconsolate child, because that was what he felt like, in truth. Four times in his life, he’d hurt beyond consolation: the first when his mother had died; the second, when Bucky had died; the third, when he’d woken in a strange new world, having lost everything he held dear; the fourth, now. He’d had Bucky and Peggy for the first two; he’d had no one for the third, until he’d found his team. And now, against all odds, he had Tony.

Tony held him, and though Steve could feel the Tony’s tears soaking into his shirt, Tony himself was very, very quiet. He trembled a little, in Steve’s arms, but he barely made a sound. 

It took Steve a long time to cry himself out. He was exhausted by the end. And he was starving, he realized with a jolt. He thought it was the first time he’d felt actual hunger since the snap. But he didn’t move. He held Tony, warm against his chest, and he felt the cold wind against his damp face and the growling of his empty stomach. All things that told him he was alive, whether he wanted to be or not. 

At last they got up to go inside. There was, as promised, soup in the kitchen. Tony heated it up on the stove while they filled each other in, slowly, on what had been happening. After dinner, there was no discussion of going their separate ways for bed. They pulled a bunch of pillows and blankets into the living room and lay down. It wasn’t the most comfortable place Steve had ever slept, but having Tony so close made up for the lack of give in the floor. 

“Tomorrow,” Steve said, into the quiet darkness, “you want to head upstate?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Yeah, I think so. I’ll need to come back, eventually, but you were right. We should both be with the team.” 

He fell quiet for a long time, then, but Steve could feel him breathing beside him, and he knew that he wasn’t asleep. Steve stayed awake, waiting. He was in no hurry to see Bucky dissolve again in his dreams. 

“Tony?” he finally whispered. 

“I was just thinking,” Tony said. “I keep... I keep trying to find a place to start, and I don’t know where to begin. If there even is a place to begin. If we should even bother. What’s the point of a futurist when there isn’t any future?”

“There is, though.” Steve rolled over to face Tony. He was much closer than he’d expected. “There is a future. I was thinking about this earlier, about all the times in my life when I felt––well, not like this. But when I felt like there was nothing left for me. And I remembered how I’ve done it before and how I’ll do it this time.”

Tony curled on his side to face Steve. He tucked his hands under his cheek. Their knees were almost touching. “How’s that?” he asked. 

“By finding the people who make the unbearable more bearable. At least for a time.” 

Tony’s eyes were very bright. “I don’t want to feel better.”

“Me neither, right now,” Steve admitted. “But we need you. I need you. I know what I’m good at. I can make sure we stay on track. I’ll get everyone up in the morning and make them run a few miles and eat their eggs and put one foot in front of the other until little by little it stops feeling so hard. But that just makes me a––a navigator. You’re the wayfinder, Tony. I think humanity has never needed its futurists more.”

Tony breathed out slowly. “That’s one hell of an order, Cap.”

“I know,” Steve said gravely. “I don’t give it lightly.”

Tony bit his lip. “And you won’t––you won’t leave me?”

“I won’t leave you,” Steve promised. The words had the weight of a vow on his tongue. “I won’t, Tony. Can you promise me the same?”

Tony nodded. “I promise. Whatever happens, we do it together.”

It felt like a marriage of sorts. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part. Steve watched the shadows on Tony’s face and thought about finding their way, together, in this brave and terrible new world they were in. He’d give up on the idea of finding true partnership and companionship in this life. He’d missed his chance with Peggy, he’d thought. Maybe he’d just been looking in the wrong places. 

He and Tony spent a long time watching each other. Studying each other. Steve wondered what Tony saw in his face. But Tony’s blinks got longer and longer, and Steve felt sleep dragging at him, too. 

“Sleep well,” Tony said at last. He closed his eyes. His lashes were unbelievably long against the stark pallor of his skin. “I’m here.”

“Me too,” Steve said, and closed his eyes. “I’m here, Tony. Sleep well.”

_Fin._


End file.
